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Why does Syria suddenly need its last practicing Jew? It needs America.
In what used to be Syria’s old Jewish quarter, Bakhour Chamntoub, a 76-year-old tennis-playing bachelor, lives as the last practicing Jew in Syria and the de facto leader of Syria’s six-person-strong Jewish community.
Life has changed for Chamntoub since the highly oppressive Assad Regime fell in December 2024. Under Assad, he and the rest of Syria’s remaining Jews kept a low profile. Now, Chamntoub has become something of a local celebrity.
The Palestinian children in his neighborhood routinely knock on his door asking for tennis balls. One Muslim resident of Damascus said he calls Chamntoub “uncle.” And these days, he regularly hosts reporters, tourists, and academics in his home – something he says would have been impossible under Assad. Members of the Israeli media now call him their “No. 1 Jew,” he said.
When he walks in the street, neighbors greet him warmly. “‘Shalom, boker tov, shabbat shalom,’ everybody says to me!” he shared gleefully during a video conversation from his patio in Damascus.
As Syria seeks sanctions relief, foreign investment, and international legitimacy after decades of dictatorship, outreach to Jews has become a way for the new government to signal its newfound tolerance to the West. And it seems to be working. This week, President Donald Trump announced plans to remove Syria from the State Department’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list for the first time since 1979.
But not everyone is on board. Several Syrian minority groups in the U.S. have been campaigning against lifting the remaining sanctions, fearing the government will persecute minorities once it secures Western support. Their concerns are not unwarranted: there have been several attacks on minority communities since the government’s rise to power, including some reportedly involving Syrian authorities.
A long history of decline
For years, Chamntoub has been the sole caretaker of Jewish life in Syria. He knows which Jewish families once lived in which homes, which of Syria’s 22 synagogues are still standing, and where generations of Syrian Jews are buried.
When a member of the community dies, Chamntoub is responsible for overseeing the burial process. Bodies of Jewish community members are taken to a Muslim burial office to be washed and prepared, before Chamntoub takes them to the Jewish cemetery. There, they are buried, though there are not enough Jews in the country to make a minyan, the minimum quorum of 10 Jewish men required by Jewish law to conduct communal religious services mandated for Jewish burials.
Syria’s Jewish community is among the oldest in the world, dating back more than 2,000 years. At its height, it numbered roughly 100,000 people, with communities concentrated in Aleppo and Damascus, but waves of persecution and political upheaval led to a mass exodus of Jews from Syria. Following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, Jews faced deadly pogroms and restrictions on emigration under successive Syrian governments. Many who attempted to leave the country were imprisoned, tortured or killed.
In 1992, when then-Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad finally permitted Syrian Jews to emigrate, thousands left en masse for Brooklyn, New Jersey, Israel and Mexico.
Chamntoub, who was born in 1950, witnessed almost every chapter of the community’s decline. He also lived through the reign of Hafez al-Assad’s son, Bashar al-Assad, a brutal leader who used chemical weapons on his own people to suppress dissent, and oversaw a 14-year-long civil war that resulted in the death of 400,000 Syrians.
In December 2024, Chamntoub found himself in the center of a new chapter of Syrian Jewish history after opposition forces toppled the Assad regime. Leading the charge was Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former Al-Qaeda member who is now the self-appointed leader of the new Syrian government and trying to prove his days of terrorism are behind him. He dons a suit and goes by his birth name rather than the pseudonym he used during his time in al-Qaeda, al-Jolani. He speaks of making peace with his neighbors (Israel among them), and has expressed interest in bringing exiled Jews back to Syria.
This fall, al-Sharaa met with a group of Syrian American Jews in New York – though they avoided the topic of Israel. He has even appointed a designated official within the government whose job it is to engage with Syrian Jews in the diaspora.
Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, said the strategy is not new. During the Assad era, Syria’s ambassador to the United States in the early 2000s, Imad Moustapha, cultivated relationships with Syrian Jews in Brooklyn, attending bar mitzvahs and community events in hopes of easing Syria’s isolation.
“The charm campaign by Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s new president, is clearly a continuation of the same strategy,” Landis said.
Indeed, most U.S. sanctions on Syria were lifted in May of 2025, due in part to lobbying in Washington by an American Syrian Jewish organization called the Jewish Heritage in Syria Foundation. Its leader Henry Hamra, the nephew of Syria’s last chief rabbi, has been the face of efforts to involve the Jewish diaspora in conversation about Syria’s future.
Through it all, Chamntoub never seriously considered leaving Syria, even as family members emigrated to the U.S. and Israel. He says he never felt like an outsider in the country. He enjoys living in his parents’ home among fruit trees and birds whose songs often drowned out the virtual conversation from his patio. He also enjoys his girlfriends in Syria, whom he says he can’t bear to leave.
He cleans his home for Shabbat every Friday, and prepares a meal to commemorate each Jewish holiday, though he says it is hard to get in the holiday spirit alone.
He also keeps kosher, a Herculean task in Syria. For years, Chamntoub ate a vegetarian diet, relying on a rabbi in Turkey to smuggle him kosher meat from time to time. Then, in 2018, he met a 24-year-old Syrian Jew living in Brooklyn named Joe Jajati.
Jajati was born in Syria and left the country at age 2. His grandfather was the head representative of the Jewish community in Syria and, according to Jajati, met frequently with then-President Assad.
Jajati always hoped to visit his birth country, and decided to make the trip after learning there was a Jewish man who remained there.
“I just wanted to meet him. I wanted to hear what he had to say,” Jajati told me.
The two met in Damascus and connected instantly. “After that, we became like best friends,” said Jajati, who has returned several times over the years, always with a suitcase full of kosher meat for Chamntoub.
After the Assad regime fell, Jajati felt the moment was ripe to change the way Syrians think of Jews, and the way Israelis and Americans view Syria.
‘We don’t represent the radical point of view’
Alongside Chamntoub, Jajati started the Syrian Mosaic Foundation, an organization that hopes to revive Jewish life in Syria and promote a more pluralistic future for the country. Chamntoub heads its Syria branch, working alongside Muslim and Christian staff, including Palestinians.
One of the foundation’s main initiatives is bringing delegations of Jews to Syria under armed government escort. The delegations are intended to foster relationships that were impossible under Assad.
Participants often include reporters and academics, among them David Horovitz, the editor-in-chief of The Times of Israel, and Dr. Susanna Heschel, the head of Jewish studies at Dartmouth.
After visiting the University of Damascus, Heschel brought a Syrian exchange student she met there to Dartmouth. She hopes he will be the first of many.
“I want to expose these young [Syrians] to Judaism, Jewish history, Zionism,” she said. “They don’t know anything. How could they? Nobody’s teaching that at the university.”
Jajati says the reason the new Syrian government supports this work is clear. “They want to show, not just the Jews, but the world that, ‘Look, we’re good now, we’re not what people think we are.’”
When the delegations come, they often stay at the Inana Hotel, a complex of homes that once belonged to Joe Jajati’s family. It sat empty for years until it was purchased and turned into a hotel by a Muslim family – a common fate for the property of Jews who fled Syria.
Maysara Al-Zoubi, a Mosaic staff member whose family owns the hotel, said he joined the organization in hopes of helping attract Western investment to Syria.
“You have to give investors a good example that we don’t represent the radical point of view,” he said. “We wanted to wash the image of the radical society, and to give another good image to bring these investors to the country.”
Critical to that, he said through a translator, is the work the Mosaic Foundation is doing to bring Jews back into the fabric of Syrian society.
In March, the organization restored its first synagogue, the El Frenj synagogue in Damascus. Last month, a group worked to clean up the tombstone of Rabbi Nissim Indib, the former head Rabbi of Syria. Indib is best known for having recited the Shema prayer with Israeli spy Eli Cohen before his execution.
With the help of Syria’s new police chief, Mosaic also managed to gain possession of several Jewish artifacts that were stolen and put on the black market in the midst of the chaotic fall of the Assad regime.
And this week, the organization began work to renovate Syria’s main Jewish cemetery.
‘They didn’t have exposure to Jews’
Jajati and Chamntoub also hope to impress upon Syrians a different view of Jews than was forced upon citizens under Assad.
“These people were closed off to the whole world the past few years,” Jajati told me. “They really didn’t have exposure to Jews under the Assad regime.”
Since the new government took power, the economic situation for most Syrians has worsened, with 90% of Syrians living in poverty. During Ramadan, Mosaic distributed hundreds of kilos of meat to non-Jewish residents from Chamntoub’s home in Damascus and at a mosque in Quneitra, the province bordering Israel that has seen repeated Israeli incursions since the Assad regime fell.
Mirna al-Rached, a Christian resident from Damascus, trekked to Chamntoub’s home for assistance.
“Bakhour put the meat neatly and gently in the bag, giving with a very nice smile on his face,” she recalled.
“It breaks the monotonous narrative that we always hear about the Jewish people,” she added. “You don’t know anything about them, except what you hear from the news, you know, the whole image about the Jewish people, about their racism, about wars, all the negative things.”
In April, after a Jewish person was reportedly threatened by a Hezbollah actor in Damascus, Mosaic installed solar-powered lights and cameras in the old Jewish Quarter as a security measure. But Jajati knows the move will benefit non-Jews living in the neighborhood as well. Years of economic collapse and electricity shortages have left many Damascus streets pitch black at night.
Now, the company that installed the lights and cameras for that project has committed to helping the organization rebuild synagogues in Syria.
“That would be the first time someone contributes with us, and it’s a Muslim Syrian company,” said Jajati, who has thus far funded Mosaic’s initiatives himself.
But many in the Syrian Jewish diaspora in the U.S. are skeptical of the engagement.
Mourdi, a member of the Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn said he remains deeply suspicious of the new government. He asked to be identified only by his first name in case he ever pursues a property claim in Syria.
Mourdi left Syria at 24 and said his family’s home and store, like those of many Syrian Jews, were transferred through fraudulent court proceedings after they fled the country. He believes the only way for the new government to earn the community’s trust is by voiding those transactions and restoring confiscated property.
“They want to show the world that they are close to the Jews, that they want them to come back, but nobody’s gonna come back,” he said.
“You want the Jews back? Make an executive order: Any Jewish property that was sold through the court is unacceptable. And after that, I’m gonna show you, 80% of our community is gonna go back to get their property,” he said.
He pointed to an episode after al-Sharaa took power in December 2024, when the new president reportedly reclaimed his own family’s former home, which had been occupied by another family under the Assad regime.
“This is my family’s house, and we have many memories here, so we’d like it back now,” al-Sharaa reportedly told the occupants before they vacated.
Mourdi said he raised the issue of property restitution with American advocates working with the new government, but never received a response.
“For us, Syria is like somebody who died,” he said. “If you try to wake him up, it’s not gonna work. But some people think, ‘No, we can bring him back.’”
Chamntoub also has reservations. While he welcomes the fact that Jews can once again visit Syria, he worries the government’s outreach will end there.
Jewish property has been seized by the state, he said. And while he is grateful for the greater freedom to express his religion and opinions publicly, he fears the government has little interest in hearing them. He briefly considered running for a seat in Syria’s legislature but ultimately decided it would be pointless.
“If I can’t express my opinions frankly… I’m not interested in being in the assembly,” he said.
Though Chamntoub has become the public face of Syria’s tiny Jewish community, the Syrian government has yet to recognize him in any official capacity.
“Everyone in the world considers me the leader of Syria’s Jewish community,” he added, “except the Syrian government.”
Neither Chamntoub nor Jajati have any delusions that they will manage to bring the Jewish community back to Syria. While Jajati says many American Syrian Jews have told him they’re interested in visiting the country, no one has plans to settle there.
“There’s no Syrian, forget about Jews, there’s no Syrian that is living in America wants to go back to live in Syria,” said Jajati.
“My dream is that it becomes like the Emirates, like Dubai,” he added. “The reality is, I hope it doesn’t become another Libya. All Syrians have to do their part so that we don’t let it get there.”
Chamntoub answered instantly when asked if he thinks the six Jews remaining in Syria will be the last: “For sure.”
After a heavy silence, he burst into laughter and cracked a joke to his translator that he might need to marry all of his girlfriends to change that.
The translator explained: “He said he will have to marry like 10 women at the same time!”
The post Why does Syria suddenly need its last practicing Jew? It needs America. appeared first on The Forward.
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Germany takes a step back to its Nazi past — and Donald Trump is cheering them on
What a role reversal.
Since the start of his second term as president, Donald Trump has looked like he’s been following the playbook of Adolf Hitler and other despots. But now Germany is becoming like Trump’s America.
The Sunday election results in Saxony-Anhalt state were a victory not just for the Alternative for Germany, known as the AfD, but also for Trumpism. As Trump’s powers are cracking in the US because of high prices and the unpopular war against Iran, the American president’s brand has not only taken root in Germany’s former communist region, but is threatening to spread across the country.
“Wow! The Populist Party in Germany just had a really big night,” Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social. “They finally got tired of the absolutely horrible Immigration rules and regulations which have hurt Germany so badly.”
“MGGA!!!,” Trump wrote at the end of his post, apparently meaning “Make Germany Great Again.”
MAGA’s influence is plain to see on social media videos posted in the run-up to the Saxony-Anhalt election, in which the AfD came alarmingly close to winning enough votes to form a government on its own, which would have been the first time since the Nazi era that an extreme-right party has taken over the leadership of a German state. The videos show AfD followers saying racist things about immigrants and the superiority of white people, that there’s too much emphasis on the Nazi years and German history needs to be told more positively, and calling for an end to funding “anti-German art,” whatever that might mean, among a host of other stands that mirror those of MAGA.
Sally Lisa Starken, a freelance German journalist and bestselling author who has been chronicling the AfD, posted an Instagram video of an AfD “family festival” in Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt.
“The whole time I felt like I was at a Trump event. The AfD has quite consciously learned from the MAGA movement,” said Starken, who has also covered Trump rallies in the US.
AfD merchandise was everywhere, including t-shirts bearing the photo of Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s lead candidate in the Saxony-Anhalt election, and the man who would become leader of the state if the party is able to find a partner willing to join in a coalition government.
As is the case with Trump, there’s a cult of personality surrounding the 35-year-old Siegmund. People at the family festival stood in line for two hours to have their picture taken with him. Just before the Saxony-Anhalt election, the cover of the newsmagazine Der Spiegel called him “the most dangerous man in Germany.” Taking a page from Trump, Siegmund used the cover’s mug shot-style photo in his election campaign.
As with Trump, people of all shapes, sizes, ages and backgrounds attend these AfD gatherings, but they’re probably even whiter than at Trump’s rallies. And like Trump, Siegmund sounds like a huckster who knows how to grab the attention of people who feel like they’ve been left behind.
The AfD has become especially strong in former Communist East Germany at least partly due to German reunification, which occurred in 1990. The economy in the eastern region has never caught up with that of the wealthier west, unemployment is high, wages are comparatively low. There’s a feeling among many in eastern Germany that reunification hurt them, rather than helped them.
Reunification also triggered an explosion of neo-Nazi violence against foreigners, a scourge that continues to the present day. Resentment against foreigners soared in 2015, when then-Chancellor Angela Merkel opened Germany’s borders to waves of refugees fleeing war-torn Syria, a fateful decision that lifted the AfD from a fringe group of extremists to a party to be reckoned with — at first just in the eastern states like Saxony-Anhalt, but now across the country.
In last year’s federal elections, the AfD doubled its share of seats in the Bundestag, the German parliament. As a growing number of Germans have felt ignored by the mainstream parties — the Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Left — the AfD has surged ahead to become Germany’s largest opposition party.
Among those who attend AfD rallies are diehard neo-Nazis, many sporting tattoos with symbols and slogans banned by law because of their association with the Third Reich. Instagram videos from party gatherings show AfD followers saying that Hitler was a great man and Germany could use another leader like him, and only people with pure German blood deserve to be citizens.
Last year, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, classified the AfD as right-wing extremist.
“The ethnicity- and ancestry-based understanding of the people prevailing within the party is incompatible with the free democratic order,” the agency said in a statement at that time.
That judgment didn’t stop the AfD from seeking legitimacy abroad — or from finding it. Close links between the Trump administration and the AfD go back to the start of Trump’s second term.
It started with JD Vance’s address in February 2025 to the Munich Security Conference, an annual meeting of American government officials with our purported European allies. Vance shocked the conference by coming to the defense of extremist parties like the AfD. Since the defeat of the Nazis, Germany’s mainstream political parties have maintained a “firewall” that keeps them from cooperating with extremist parties. In his speech to the security conference, Vance essentially accused Germany’s mainstream parties of authoritarian behavior by shutting out the AfD.
“If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you,” Vance told the European leaders.
On that same trip, Vance added insult to injury by meeting with the head of the AfD, Alice Weidel.
Olaf Scholz, who was chancellor at that time, defended the firewall against the AfD, saying the party trivializes Nazi atrocities. He basically told Vance to mind his own business.
“Where our democracy goes from here is for us to decide,” Scholz said.
At the center of the fraternal relationship between the AfD and MAGA is Elon Musk, the man who insists the stiff-arm gesture he gave at a rally celebrating Trump’s second inauguration was not the Hitler salute, although it sure looked like it. Just a few days later, Musk made a virtual appearance before a gathering of 4,000 at an AfD campaign rally in Halle.
“I think you really are the best hope for Germany,” Musk told the AfD followers. “It’s good to be proud of German culture and German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.”
Musk added that there is “frankly too much of a focus on past guilt and we need to move beyond that.”
After the AfD’s success in the Saxony-Anhalt election, Musk wrote on X: “Well done!”
The AfD’s election shocker in Saxony-Anhalt has certainly caught the world’s attention — something that probably would not have happened were it not for Germany’s Nazi past.
Nonetheless, it feels like we have lost sight of a very important fact.
As we worry about the prospects of right-wing extremists increasing their power in Germany, politicians with virtually the same ideologies — xenophobes, white supremacists, racists and bigots — are already in the halls of power or positions of influence in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere in America.
And there’s something positive to be said about Germany.
Unlike the Trump administration, Germany investigates, prosecutes, and sends to prison far-right would-be insurrectionists, instead of freeing and rewarding them.
The post Germany takes a step back to its Nazi past — and Donald Trump is cheering them on appeared first on The Forward.
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For Orthodox women, or those who find men in yoga studios ‘gross,’ a refuge in Brooklyn
It’s Friday morning in Hasidic Crown Heights, just two blocks away from the Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters, and we are doing cat-cows. In cat pose, I hunch my back and pull my chin to my chest, letting gravity pull my ponytail to the ground. In cow, I pull my shoulders back, look up, and scan the room. For some, this class at Vessel Studios is a final meditative moment before a hectic day of shopping, cooking, and otherwise preparing for Shabbat. But as I look around, it’s impossible to tell which of my fellow cows is Orthodox and which is not. Save for the headscarves that some of the Hasidic women are wearing, heathens and believers alike are dressed in more or less matching uniforms of leggings and sports bras.
Ordinarily, this class would be taught by the owner of the studio, Riki Rosenthal, but she is extremely pregnant and has thus joined as a participant rather than a teacher. A Crown Heights native, Rosenthal grew up Hasidic and took her first yoga class when she was 19, an age where wearing leggings at the Crunch Gym in Prospect Heights without a skirt on top still felt like a rebellious act. Now, she identifies as a “non-frum Lubavitcher” — a phrase that captures the dual reality that she no longer conforms to an Orthodox lifestyle, but still identifies strongly with the culture in which she grew up.
“Chabad supersedes being religious in a way; it’s a culture that I will always connect to,” she said. Aside from a stint in Manhattan in her 20s, she has never lived anywhere other than Crown Heights. By founding a yoga studio that caters to women only, she has created a space where students, regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof, can exercise without the influence of men, whether for tznius, for the sisterly environment, or simply because, like Rosenthal, they believe “yoga studios with men are gross.”
In September 2020, 12 years after she took off her skirt to work out at Crunch, at a time when many studios were still closed because of COVID, Rosenthal started teaching yoga in her apartment. Two years later, she opened Vessel in the basement of a townhouse on Eastern Parkway. Signing a lease for her own studio was a big move, she said, but “there’s this part of being Chabad that makes you feel invincible.”
The studio has a soothing, sage green aesthetic, small lamps placed around the room provide soft lighting, and instructors often burn incense. There’s even a drawer with extra tichels — headscarves — in case anyone forgot theirs (though recently it had been emptied in anticipation of heavy rain and possible flooding, and hadn’t been restocked when I visited).
Rosenthal sometimes hears from would-be yoginis wanting to know if yoga is “kosher.” She feels unqualified to answer that question, especially since she “doesn’t totally subscribe to kosher.” Still, what she teaches is an Americanized brand of yoga that goes light on the Sanskrit, so that students don’t feel like they’re committing the sin of worshipping a false idol. “None of my teachers really talk about any of the yogic deities,” she said. “I try to keep it very neutral because I don’t really want to piss anyone off.”
Still, here on Eastern Parkway, as our Friday morning class comes to a gentle close, our instructor, Rachel Sherman, ends it with a “namaste” along with a “Shabbat shalom.”
For Sherman, who grew up Reform in Dallas, teaching yoga at Vessel has challenged the stereotype of Hasidic women — at least, Lubavitcher women — as quiet and demure. “A lot of my students speak, like, five languages. Most of them have careers,” she said. She admires what she views as their extreme confidence: “Total beginners will come to yoga and go straight to the front row,” she said. “No one’s afraid to tell me if they hate the incense, or if they need the temperature of the room different, and as someone who leans a little more people-pleasy, I appreciate a straight shooter.” She said she’s also impressed by how quickly women start doing yoga again after giving birth.
Maia Levy, a member of the Crown Heights Lubavitch community, was a near-total beginner when she started coming to Vessel. She said she wasn’t intimidated, though; she understood quickly that Vessel was the kind of place where “everyone is at their own pace” and “if you need to be in child’s pose for, like, 20 minutes, that’s fine.”
Earlier this year, Levy gave birth to her first child. She attended prenatal yoga at Vessel while pregnant, and returned to class a mere six weeks after giving birth. Sure, she might spend a little more time in child’s pose than before, but in a women’s-only yoga studio in a community that puts a heavy emphasis on motherhood, no one bats an eye. “I was, like, itching to get back,” she said.
The post For Orthodox women, or those who find men in yoga studios ‘gross,’ a refuge in Brooklyn appeared first on The Forward.
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The measles outbreak and the skepticism about vaccines
אַ פּאַציִענט מײַנער אין מײַן קליניק האָט מיר געװיזן אַ בילד פֿון אַ פּלימעניק מיט אַ מאָדנעם אױסשיט. „קען דאָס זײַן מאָזלען?“ האָט ער געפֿרעגט, אומבאַרויִקט. מיט פֿינף יאָר צוריק, מיט צװײ יאָר צוריק, װאָלט איך אים געזאָגט אַז דאָס איז שיִער נישט אוממעגלעך. הײַנט אָבער לײענט מען קאָשמאַרן װעגן קינדער װאָס שטאַרבן אַװעק פֿון אַ קראַנקײט װאָס האָט פֿריִער געהאַלטן בײַם עלימינירט װערן. װאָס איז געשען?
אין די שפּעטע 1950ער און פֿריִע 1960ער יאָרן, זײַנען צװײ מאָל אַזױ פֿיל קינדער געשטאָרבן פֿון מאָזלען װי פֿון פּאָליאָ. די ערשטע פּראָבע פֿון אַ מאָזלען־װאַקצין האָט מען אַדורכגעפֿירט אין 1960. אַז מע קוקט אױף דער דאָזיקער טאַבעלע, אונטן, זעט מען אַז די צאָל פֿאַלן זײַנען היפּש אַראָפּגעפֿאַלן בײַם אַדאָפּטירן דעם װאַקצין. (מע קען אױך פֿאַרגלײַכן מיט בריטאַניע, װוּ דעם װאַקצין האָט מען אײַנגעפֿירט מיט אַ 20 יאָר שפּעטער, און די צאָל פֿאַלן איז געבליבן מער װײניקער אַ הױכע ביז דעמאָלט, אין פֿאַרגלײַך מיט די פֿש״אַ.)
הײַנט זעט מען װידער מאָזלען: נישט נאָר די בולטסטע סימנים דערפֿון — דעם אױסשיט װאָס הײבט זיך אָן אױפֿן קאָפּ און גײט װײַטער אַראָפּ, ביז די פֿיס, אָדער די בלױלעכע פּינטעלעך אױף דער אינעװײניקסטער הױט פֿון מױל — נאָר אױך די סכּנות װאָס זײַנען גאַנץ רעאַל כאָטש קומען פֿאָר װײניקער, מוח־אינפֿעקציעס און טױט. אין 2023 זײַנען געװען 58 פֿאַלן מאָזלען אין די פֿאַראײניקטע שטאַטן; אין 2024 — 285; אין 2025 — 2,289, און אין 2026, ביזן 27סטן אױגוסט — 2,903 פֿאַלן.
אין 2025 זײַנען דרײַ קינדער אין אַמעריקע געשטאָרבן פֿון מאָזלען, און ביז איצט אין 2026 זײַנען צוויי קינדער געשטאָרבן, כאָטש די טראָמפּ־אַדמיניסטראַציע, בײַנאַנד מיט דער דירעקטאָרין פֿון פֿעדעראַלן סי־די־סי, עריקאַ שוואַרץ, האָבן אָפּגעמעקט יענעם ציפֿער פֿון פֿעדעראַלן װעבזײַטל.
די סיבות פֿאַר װאָס מע װאָלט געװאָלט באַהאַלטן יענעם ציפֿער דעקן זיך מיט די סיבות פֿאַרן נעגאַטיװן צוגאַנג צו װאַקצינען װאָס הערשט אין דער איצטיקער רעגירונג. װאָס אַן אמת, כאָטש מע האָט ליב צו באַשולדיקן דעם פּרעזידענט אין אַנטי־װאַקציניזם, איז אַזאַ צוגאַנג אױך אַ סך מער פֿאַרשפּרײט אין אַנדערע לענדער. אױך אין קאַנאַדע שטײַגט די צאָל פֿאַלן מאָזלען און דעם אַנטי־װאַקציניזם שטיצט מען מער אין דער עפֿנטלעכקײט. הײסט עס אַז טראָמפּ, און דער נעגאַטיװער צוגאַנג פֿונעם געזונט־סעקרעטאַר ראָבערט קענעדי לגבי װאַקצינען, זײַנען נאָר סימפּטאָמען פֿון אַ ברײטערער גלאָבאַלער טענדענץ.
בכלל װילן אַ סך הײַנטיקע רעגירונג־פֿירער איבער דער װעלט אײַנצױמען די מאַכט און דעם גרײך פֿון דער מלוכה. זײער טענה גײט אין דעם, אַז די מלוכה מישט זיך כּלומרשט צו פֿיל אַרײַן אינעם לעבן פֿון מענטשן. דאָס איז געקניפּט און געבונדן מיט אַן אַזוי־גערופֿענעם פּאָפּוליזם. אַזעלכע אָנפֿירערס װילן שטיצן „דאָס פֿאָלק“ קעגן „דער עליטע.“
צום באַדױערן רעכנט „די עליטע“ אַרײַן מענטשן װאָס זײַנען יאָ מומחים אין געװיסע געביטן װאָס דאַרפֿן יאָ אַ ספּעציאַליזירטן צוגאַנג. און „דאָס פֿאָלק“ װאָס די דאָזיקע אָנפֿירערס שטיצן איז אָפֿט מאָל נאָר דער טײל פֿאָלק װאָס שטיצט יענע פֿירערס. (מע זעט נישט קײן איניציאַטיװן פֿון די דאָזיקע אַנטי־װאַקצין־רעגירונגען צו שטיצן אַנדערע אַספּעקטן פֿון עפֿנטלעכן געזונט. פֿאַרקערט, די קאַמפּאַניע לטובֿת געזינטערע שפּײַזן פֿון קענעדי איז מערסטנס אַן אופֿן צו באַשלדיקן יחידים אין זײערע דיִעטעטישע טעותן.)
די דאָזיקע אידעאָלאָגיִעס העלפֿן דערקלערן פֿאַר װאָס „פּאָפּוליסטישע“ אָנפֿירערס אין אַ צאָל לענדער טרעטן אַרױס קעגן דאָקטױרים, קעגן פֿאָלקסגעזונט, קעגן װאַקצינען, נאָר פֿון דער אַנדערער זײַט, ניצן זיי יאָ די מאַכט פֿון דער מלוכה זיך אַלײן צו באַרײַכערן און באַשיצן.
די דאָזיקע טענדענצן שפּיגלען זיך אױך אָפּ אין די מײנונגען נישט בלויז פֿון די פֿירערס, נאָר אױך פֿון סתּם מענטשן פֿון אַ גאַנץ יאָר. יעדע װאָך זע איך אַ סך פּאַציענטן אין מײַנע קליניקן אין באַלטימאָר װאָס זײַנען סקעפּטיש לגבי װאַקצינען אָדער זײַנען אַקטיװ דערקעגן.
פֿאַר װאָס װיל מען זיך נישט װאַקצינירן? װעגן דעם האָט מען אַדורכגעפֿירט אַ צאָל שטודיעס, נאָר אױף אײן פֿוס איז װיכטיק צו דערקענען אַז דאָס נישט װאַקצינירן זיך מײנט נישט אַז מע װיל נישט. דאָס לעבן איז קאָמפּליצירט, אַ סך פֿאָדערונגען קאָנקורירן איינע מיט דער צווייטער, און אױב מע דאַרף פֿאָרן צום דאָקטער, אין אַ געװיסער שעה, און צאָלן אַפֿילו בלױז אַ פּאָר דאָלער, קען דאָס אױך זײַן אַ מניעה. (שטעל זיך פֿאָר אױב מע האָט קלײנע קינדער אױך, אָדער עס פֿעלט אַ טראַנספּאָרט־מיטל, אָדער די ריכטיקע שפּראַך.) מיט אײן װאָרט, מענטשן טוען וואָס ס׳איז זיי גרינגער.
אָבער עס זײַנען אױך דאָ מענטשן װאָס זײַנען נישט זיכער אַזױ צי אַזױ װעגן װאַקצינען, זײ פֿילן זיך אין אַ קאָנפֿליקט. מע האָט נישט קײן צוטרױ צו דער רעגירונג, מע האָט מורא פֿאַר די בײַ־עפֿעקטן (װאָס עקזיסטירן יאָ), מע האָט זיך אינאָפֿרמירט מיט פֿאַלשע ידיעות.
אַ בײַשפּיל װאָס קער אינטערעסירן די פֿאָרווערטס־לײענערס איז אַנשי שלומנו, די חסידישע קהילות אַרום דער װעלט, װוּ װאַקצין־סקעפּטיציזם איז אױך אַן ענין. כאָטש מע זאַמלט נישט קײן דאַטן אין די אַמעריקאַנער צענזוסן באַזירט אױף רעליגיע, קען מען זען, למשל, פֿון די מאַפּעס בײַם ניו־יאָרקער געזונט־דעפּאַרטמענט, אַז אין די געגנטן װיליאַמסבורג און באָראָ־פּאַרק, למשל, איז דער פּראָצענט װאַקצינירטקײט װײניקער.
די סיבות פֿאַר װאָס טײל חסידים זײַנען נישט איבערצײַגט צו װאַקצינען זײערע קינדער זײַנען ענלעך אױף סיבות פֿון אַנדערע אַזעלכע איבער דער װעלט: אַ שטײַגנדיקן אומצוטרױ צו דער רעגירונג אין אַ תּקופֿה פֿון עקאָנאָמישער און געזעלשאַפֿטלעכער אומזיכערקײט.
װען עס רעדט זיך וועגן געזונט־באַשלוסן, פֿאָלגט מען אָפֿט מאָל נישט די עצה פֿונעם דאָקטער, נאָר גיכער וואָס עס זאָגט אַ קרובֿ אָדער אַ גוטער־פֿרײַנד. אױב עס מאַכט זיך אַ שװעריקײט אָדער אַן אומבאַקװעמלעכקײט אַרום װאַקצינען, קען געמאָלט זײַן, אַז מע װעט נאָכמאַכן די מענטשן װאָס מע קען פּערזענלעך און מיט װעלכע מע פֿאַרברענגט אַ סך צײַט.
מעדיצינישער עטיקערס הײבן אַרױס די װיכטיקײט פֿון „פֿרײַען אױסקלײַב“ װעגן געזונט־באַשלוסן, נאָר אַ סך פֿירעכצן װאָס זײַנען אָנגענומען אין אונדזערע געזעלשאַפֿטן און קהילות זײַנען נישט גוט דורכגעטראַכט — אַרײַנגערעכנט פֿירעכצן װאָס שטיצן דעם עפֿנטלעכן געזונט. דאָס טראָגן שיץ־פּאַסן, למשל, אָדער דאָס פֿאָרן פּאַמעלעכער ווי די מאַקסימאַלע גיכקײט, אָדער דאָס נישט רײכערן אין עפֿנטלעכע ערטער, דאָס פֿאַרזיכערן געזונטע שפּײַזן און װאַסער־קאַנאַליזאַציע — דאָס אַלץ זײַנען דערגרײכונגען פֿון פֿאָלקס־געזונט װאָס זײַנען באַזירט אױפֿן מבֿינות פֿון רעגירונג־עקספּערטן, נישט יחידישע באַשלוסן װאָס מע דאַרף װידער נעמען יעדן טאָג פֿון דאָס נײַ.
ווען מע לעבט אין אַ געזעלשאַפֿט דאַרף מען, פֿאַרשטייט זיך, אָננעמען געװיסע אַחריותן לטובֿת דעם כּלל. װען איך װאָלט געדאַרפֿט איבערצײַגן אַלע מײַנע פּאַציענטן אײנציקװײַז װעגן װאַקצינען װאָלט געװען אוממעגלעך צו דערגרײכן די באַשיצונג װאָס מע דאַרף פֿאַר דער גאַנצער באַפֿעלקערונג. לאָמיר האָפֿן אַז דעם עפֿנטלעכן געזונט, באַזירט אױף װיסנשאַפֿטלעכע פֿאַקטן, װעט אונדזער געזעלשאַפֿטלעך װײַטער שטיצן.
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